| Texas Science & Natural History Museum | |
| Established: | 1939 |
| Coordinates: | 30.287°N -97.7324°W |
| Type: | Natural history museum |
| Website: | tmm.utexas.edu |
The Texas Science & Natural History Museum is located on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin in Austin, Texas, U.S. It opened as the Texas Memorial Museum during preparations for the Texas Centennial Exposition held in 1936. The museum's focus is on natural history, including paleontology, geology, biology, herpetology, ichthyology and entomology. The Texas Memorial Museum building was designed in the Art Deco style by John F. Staub, with Paul Cret as supervising architect. Ground was broken for the building by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in January 1936.[1] The museum was opened on January 15, 1939.
The museum won "Best of Austin" awards from the Austin Chronicle in 2002, 2005, and 2012.[2]
The museum had exhibits on Texas history, anthropology, geography, and ethnography, but these were relocated to other museums (including the Bullock Texas State History Museum) in 2001. In October 2013, Linda Hicke, the dean of Austin's College of Natural Sciences, cut the museum's funding by $400,000.[3]
The museum closed in 2022 for extensive renovations.[4] It underwent a re-branding and became Texas Science & Natural History Museum. The museum reopened on September 23, 2023.[5]
In 1723, the Comanche defeated the Lipan Apache people in a nine-day battle along the Rio del Fierro (Wichita River).[6] The River of Iron may be the location written about by Athanase De Mezieres in 1772, containing "a mass of metal which the Indians say is hard, thick, heavy, and composed of iron", which they "venerate...as an extraordinary manifestation of nature", the Comanche's calling it "Ta-pic-ta-carre [standing rock], Po-i-wisht-carre [standing metal], or Po-a-cat-le-pi-le-carre [medicine rock]", the general area containing a "large number of meteoric masses".
The Wichita County meteorite originally weighed 145 kg and was obtained by Major Robert Neighbors,[7] US Indian agent at Fort Belknap, in 1858-1859, who presented it to the State Cabinet, and was displayed in the old Capitol building before it burned down, when this Coarse Octahedrite was turned over to the University of Texas. According to Neighbors, "When the meteorite was conveyed to the Indian reserve, the Comanches collected in great numbers around their valued medicine stone and, whilst manifesting their attachment by rubbing their arms, hands, and chests over it, earnestly besought Major Neighbors to permit them to keep it at the agency."
A sister meteorite weighing 742 kg, the Red River meteorite, was discovered in 1808 but this Medium Octahedrite now resides in the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History.